Hungryroot turns vegetables into bright and delicious pasta dishes.

Hungryroot

What it is: Former Groupon exec Ben McKean launched Hungryroot to turn veggies into amazing pasta dishes. When you order from Hungryroot, you get a packaged meal the next day that consists of 70 to 80% vegetables and 20% protein. The base ingredient is vegetable noodles — made from sweet potatoes, radishes, beets, zucchinis, and more — paired with a creative sauce, and served with an optional protein side. In its first month, Hungryroot sold 10,000 meals.

Periscope is the video livestreaming app Twitter bought before it even launched.

Twitter

What it is: In March, Twitter launched Periscope, a livestreaming app it acquired back in February before Periscope even launched. Periscope lets users easily stream footage from their devices to followers. Viewers can comment and send "hearts" to the streamer. The footage can be then replayed later, which sets it apart from rival app Meerkat, where the footage is gone once the stream is over.

The League is a dating app for the elite.

What it is: The League — a selective dating app for elite, successful individuals — launched in San Francisco earlier this year, and it just launched in New York City. Stanford graduate Amanda Bradford founded The League to match up highly motivated and interesting single professionals. Its users often have advanced degrees.

Gogoro is building the "Tesla of scooters."

Gogoro

What it is: Gogoro launched this year after working in stealth mode since 2011. The company debuted its first product at this year's Consumer Electronics Show: a smart, plug-free electric scooter. The scooter is powered by a portable battery that you will be able to swap out at Gogoro stations across major cities, according to the company. Gogoro's scooter is best for commuting and short trips: its scooters go up to 60 miles per hour, and you can get about 100 miles out of a charge. The Gogoro system connects to the cloud via a cellular network and provides onboard diagnostics through a connected smartphone app.

Ride wants to make your commute cheaper, easier and better for the environment.

Ride

What it is: Oscar Salazar, Uber's founding CTO and third cofounder alongside Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick, launched Ride earlier this year to make commuting less of a hassle. Ride is focused solely on commuters and carpooling and it wants to create efficiency there, particularly in places where public transportation is not readily available. It works by matching a company's employees — people who likely have their own cars but want to save money by riding together — with coworkers who share similar commutes.

Honor pairs up seniors who want to stay in their homes with caretakers.

Honor

What it is: Honor matches seniors with professionals who can take care of them in their homes while giving concerned family members a way to keep track of everything. Unlike on-demand services like Uber and Lyft that let people accept jobs right away, Honor wants its home-care professionals, who start at $15 an hour, to foster long-lasting relationships with seniors. Honor tries to teach them what to expect and pair them up with seniors with whom they can work well. For example, a senior who speaks Mandarin Chinese can opt to match with a home-care professional who also speaks Mandarin.

Eero has a solution for your Wi-Fi woes.

Screenshot/Eero

What it is: There's nothing worse than having choppy Wi-Fi throughout your apartment. That's the problem Eero is trying to solve. Eero's devices are little white pods that use Bluetooth and mesh networking to connect and extend the Wi-Fi in your home. When you buy three — that's how many Eero says a typical home needs — you'll connect the first to your modem, and the others get plugged in to power outlets. The devices connect to one another through internal radios. Eero's devices are available for preorder now — you can get one for $125 or three for $299. Its devices will ship this summer.

Even offers credit to help make ends meet between paychecks.

Even/Screenshot

What it is:Even is a smartphone app that's meant to help low-income employees with uneven income streams manage from paycheck to paycheck. While a lot of Silicon Valley tech startups target the rich, Even caters to people with bad credit, or people who have an hourly job and unpredictable hours, by giving them credit to help them when they're having a rough week. They pay a flat fee rather than interest. Even works with a user's bank account, charging $5 a week to give users a steady paycheck for the same amount of money every week — even if they get a lot of hours one week and fewer the next. Users can take advantage of features including emergency expenses and automatic budgeting. There's also a pause button, which stops payments, for users who are facing financial difficulty.

Jet.com is a buzzy e-commerce startup that's taking on Amazon.

Marc Lore, CEO and founder of Jet.com
Jet

What it is: Marc Lore, the former CEO of Quidsi, has been working on a mysterious e-commerce startup that wants to take on Amazon. This year, Jet.com launched in beta, backed by investors including Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, for 10,000 "insiders." The site promises to offer prices that are 10-to-15% lower than anywhere else, including Amazon. Instead of making a profit by taking a cut off the top of product prices, Jet makes money solely from a Costco-esque membership free: Users have to pay $50 a year to shop.

Meerkat is a livestreaming app that people at SXSW went crazy for this year.

Meerkat

What it is: Meerkat is a new livestreaming app that syncs up with Twitter to let you live stream and share video in real time. The app quickly became a favorite of Product Hunt users several weeks ago after it was posted to the startup and app discovery website. It was a hit at SXSW as well. Sources tell TechCrunch that Meerkat now has more than 300,000 users. Meerkat initially depended on Twitter for its social graph, but on the same day that it acquired livestreaming startup and presumed Meerkat rival Periscope, Twitter briefly crippled Meerkat by limiting its access. From a usage standpoint, however, both apps are now seeing similar engagement.

21 is a secretive bitcoin startup that wants to mine bitcoin using your phone.

Ethan Miller/Getty Images

What it is: 21, a bitcoin startup that's been operating in stealth, recently announced its plan: a product in the form of an embeddable chip called the BitShare chip that lets you "mine" bitcoin in the background of your phone. These bitcoins could be used to pay for small services you use. Mining bitcoin essentially lets you generate a stream of cryptocurrency as a reward for continuously verifying transactions. The applications for 21's new product in the Internet of Things space, e-commerce, and micropayments could be significant. In a blog post, the company explained: "Rather than paying a number of different subscription bills, by including the right-sized 21 BitShare with the device one can under many scenarios wholly or partially defray the expense of the cloud service."

Vive offers unlimited in-salon blowouts for $99 a month.

Alanna Gregory, founder of Vive
Twitter

What it is: For $99 a month, Vive lets customers get as many blowouts as they want from hair salons in their city. Alanna Gregory, the company's founder, had a hard time finding a place to get her hair blown out aside from Drybar, which books up weeks in advance. Instead of taking on the at-home, Uber-for-blowouts market — where companies like Glamsquad and Priv compete — Gregory wanted to keep the experience in-salon. Vive has launched in beta in New York City, and follows a similar business model to fitness class subscription service ClassPass: one monthly rate for unlimited sessions.